NeevaAI: search engine Neeva trials AI helper
Remember Neeva? One of a few new search engines that aims to revolutionize search by switching from generating revenue through advertisement and tracking to subscriptions. Neeva promises unbiased search results, no advertisement and better search results.
A free version is available, but the service is financed through subscriptions.
NeevaAI
NeevaAI is the latest feature of the search engine. It is currently only available in the United States for Neeva account holders, free or paid. Anyone can change the language and region to the U.S. to make use of the feature right away; a VPN connection or other forms of bypasses are not required.
NeevaAI analyzes the user's query and produces a single answer that summarizes content from the "most relevant sites to a query". Unlike ChatGPT, which does not reveal sources, NeevaAI cites the sources that it used to create the response to the user's query.
Another important difference between NeevaAI and ChatGPT is that NeevaAI has access to recent information. If you used ChatGPT, you know that its database is limited to information from 2021 and before.
A NeevaAI result is displayed at the top of the search results page when a user makes a search using the search engine. There is a short delay before the result is displayed.
The AI produced result is a paragraph long usually, but sometimes longer, and contains information from one or multiple sources. The example given on the screenshot at the top lists two sources for the query.
NeevaAI highlights different sources when users move the mouse over the generated results. It makes it easier to distinguish the different sources.
There is unfortunately no option to click on the footnote to jump to the source right away. It could open in a new tab in the browser and would improve usability and the benefit for web publications significantly.
The cited sources are usually found in the top ten of search results, and users would find them by clicking through to the sites as well. The main benefit of the AI component is that it provides a quick answer for the query.
Most users may still want to click on the sources used by NeevaAI and go through the other search results on the page to widen the answer spectrum or information.
NeevaAI is in Beta right now. The AI component responds to certain queries only currently. Attempts to get it to produce tech related queries failed at the time of writing.
Support is expanded according to the company, and it will be interesting to see how well these will do once launched.
Closing Words
NeevaAI is an interesting addition to the Neeva search engine that sets it apart from other search engines currently. Search engine users may still want to verify results and not trust them blindly, but this goes for content on any Internet site and not just content produced by AI.
Neeva is not the only search engine that is introducing an AI component. Microsoft plans to test OpenGPT in Bing this year, and Google is probably also working on something similar already.
Now You: what is your opinion on AI generated results in search?
